The Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) is a process of tracking and analyzing each stage of the customer lifecycle, assigning metrics to each step and measuring the success of your business based on those metrics . The customer lifecycle refers to the journey your customers take to become your customers and interact with your brand. Regardless of your brands product or service, most customers follow a similar set of steps. Spending the time to analyze these steps can give you a better idea of your businesss performance at each stage of the customer lifecycle .
The customer lifecycle management features five distinct stages, each of which can be analyzed with metrics to maximize a prospective customers experience and the likelihood of conversion to paying customer. These stages are:
1. Awareness: The customer becomes aware of your brand and its products or services.
2. Engagement: The customer engages with your brand, such as by visiting your website or social media pages.
3. Conversion: The customer makes a purchase from your brand.
4. Retention: The customer continues to purchase from your brand.
5. Loyalty: The customer becomes a loyal customer and advocates for your brand .
One tool for customer lifecycle management is a sales funnel. A sales funnel is a visual representation of your customers journey from prospect, to lead and finally to purchasing customer. While this tool does not give you actual data on the stages of your customer lifecycle, its a useful first step if you want to analyze your businesss pipeline and visualize the customer journey .